Play: Airswimming at Putney Arts Theatre

Freya Finnerty and Angie Fullman play two women, Persephone Baker and Dora Kitson, who have been imprisoned in a hospital for the criminally insane.

They don't know why they are there but they remain incarcerated for fifty years running from the 1920s to the 1970s. The play is a lighthearted and moving look at the friendship between the two women and how they survive life in the asylum.

They create a world of imagination which jumbles their histories with their fantasies and their realities with the make believe of what might have been, with Doris Day, peroxide wigs, synchronised swimming and the Wicca all making an appearance.

Airswimming was Charlotte Jones's first stage play, which she wrote as a frustrated actress in order to create a substantial role for herself.

The play premiered at the Battersea Arts Centre in 1997 and was later broadcast on Radio 4, with Jones going on to win the Critics' Circle Most Promising Playwright award in 1999.

She is perhaps now most famous for writing the book for West End musical, The Woman in White.

Airswimming, Putney Arts Theatre, Ravenna Road, October 8-10 and 16-17, 7.45pm, £10. Call 02087886943 or visit putneyartstheatre.org.uk